Political Vandalism: Both Parties Say Election Posters Go Missing

Friday

Oct 26, 2012 at 11:53 PM

John Anthony looked down the street last week and noticed all the Obama for President signs missing in his neighborhood. A count of locations where signs had been placed along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and other main streets in northwest Lakeland revealed approximately 200 signs had been removed.

By Bill RuftyLedger POLITICAL EDITOR

LAKELAND | John Anthony looked down the street last week and noticed all the Obama for President signs missing in his neighborhood. A count of locations where signs had been placed along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and other main streets in northwest Lakeland revealed approximately 200 signs had been removed.

Paul Brocker said 12 Romney for President signs in Glenmore, a gated community on Scott Lake, had been destroyed Oct. 17 and said he even had the approximate time — between 7:15 p.m. and 8:40 p.m.

"We have checked the login codes to the gate to see who all came in at that time or if they were manipulated somehow by driving in before the gate closed," he said. "It is just senseless. They were just torn up and thrown on the ground."

Every election some signs disappear or are defaced. Most are from vandalism and some are simply pranks, which are also illegal, like the time on Collins Avenue when high school students pulled up scores of signs around town and placed them in the yard of a classmate.

Of course, almost every candidate swears such acts are coming from his or her opponent, although that is not always the case.

But this year the vandalism is getting more involved, even to the point of adding derogatory wording to the signs, ­something seldom seen before.

Ricky Shirah, a Democratic candidate for Polk County Commission, said several of his signs have had the faces cut out, leaving only the frame of the sign standing.

Anthony said he doesn't understand why anyone would remove such as enormous number of signs from his neighborhood. He said a friend told him she saw a man in a pickup truck driving along the roadway stopping, picking up the signs and throwing them in the back of his truck.

She did not see if it was an official city or county truck picking up signs from the right of way, where they are not allowed, or if it was someone taking signs from private property, he said.

"They took almost every one, and those cost a lot of money," Anthony said. "In all my years of helping in political campaigns, I have never seen anything like this."

Andy Crossfield, president of the Lakeland Democratic Club, said he was well aware Republicans have had their signs taken as well, and that every sign is a target.

"The inference of all this is that these are political tricks," he said. "I persuaded a lady on Lake Miriam Drive to put an Obama sign in her yard. In less than a week her sign had been torn up and someone had torn up her lawn with a car."

Chris Dowdy, who had been a County Commission candidate in the Republican primary Aug. 14, said several of his signs disappeared and others were defaced.

"But the most discouraging were those someone had written on," he said. "The police have the pictures. I am no handwriting expert, but the handwriting looks strikingly similar to handwriting on other (candidates') signs. One even wrote ‘Village idiot,'?" said Dowdy, who is a legislative assistant.

Shirah said someone had also written on his signs about his owing someone money.

As for the missing signs, the city investigated and determined the signs had not been placed in the right of way on Martin Luther King and there are no records of the city removing any signs recently and certainly not 200 signs.

"There was a call about signs in the right of way on Kathleen Road, but when we got there, they were gone and it wasn't us," said Lakeland Assistant City Manager Tony Delgado. "When we find any signs in the right of way we remove them, but we find a place on private property to put the political signs," he said.

Defacing or stealing signs is more than a prank or a dirty trick; it is also illegal.

"If the signs are on the right of way they are fair game," said Scott Wilder of the Polk County Sheriff's Office. "But if they are on private property that is petit theft or vandalism, both a third-degree misdemeanor."

[ Bill Rufty can be reached at 802-7523 or bill.rufty@theledger.com. ]

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